In the proposed budget for the financial year 2024–25, the allocation in the agriculture sector remained almost unchanged, compared with the previous year, despite agriculture was termed a priority sector during the budget announcement.
The finance minister, Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, proposed allocating Tk 38,259 crore for the agriculture sector, including food, fisheries, and livestock, slightly up from Tk 35,880 crore allocated last year.
Budget documents show that this year’s agriculture sector allocation accounts for 5.9 per cent of the budget, up from 5.7 per cent for the outgoing financial year.
The poor allocation in agriculture which employs about 45 per cent of the labour force continued to surprise agricultural economists.
‘Agriculture sector is crucial and lifesaver,’ said Abdul Bayes, a retired economics professor at Jahangirnagar University.
‘But the sector is not getting due importance,’ he said.
Agriculture in a climate-vulnerable Bangladesh is facing more challenges than ever before, with global political unrest triggering hikes in agricultural inputs and the pandemic leaving farmers in a broken condition, the experts said.
Sunk in high-interest loans and hit by a non-stop rise in living costs, farmers needed cash and were selling their crops right after harvest at low prices.
Many farmers do not have storage access and sell boro, whose trading has begun in full swing, at less than their cost of production.
Many cultivators, burdened with high-interest loans due to years of low prices and disastrous weather events, fell into further indebtedness for taking high-interest loans to cope with the economic crisis not seen in years.
Farmers grow crops, though they fail to get back their investment with no effective action from the government to look into the matter, not even after knowing agriculture is indispensable to Bangladesh’s economic survival.
‘How can farmers are expected to deal with increasing salinity and losses incurred upon them from back to back disasters?’ asked professor ASM Golam Hafeez, who teaches agricultural economics and rural sociology at the Bangladesh Agricultural University.
The budget speech delivered by the finance minister is filled with praises about agriculture sector and its importance in holding Bangladesh together.
The minister said that the agriculture sector was a priority which is the basis for channeling resources to transform Bangladesh into a developed, prosperous and smart country by 2041.
The minister promised continuing support to agriculture sector to ensure food security.
In the FY2022-23, within the scope of the agriculture and rural development programmes, approximately 27 lakh small and marginal farmers were provided loans from various banks which amounted to Tk 22,402 crore, the minister said in his speech.
Besides, in FY2023-24, a target of Tk 35 thousand crore has been set for the distribution of agricultural and rural loans.
